


fun and fellowship

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Primeval
Genre: (the kind that are complicated by the Official Secrets Act as well as 20+ years of history), Christmas, Difficult Sibling Relationships, Ethics, F/F, F/M, Family, Sibling Rivalry, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-24 01:28:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13202781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: Claudia doesn't agree with much about her half-sister's current handling of the anomaly project, but that isn't going to get either of them out of their mother's Christmas party.





	fun and fellowship

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Annariel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annariel/gifts).



> Written for Annariel in the Primeval Denial Secret Santa 2017, with grateful thanks to lukadreaming for a speedy beta!

_a season of **fun and fellowship** , that we all adore. - Tom Lehrer._

A light snow had fallen earlier in the day and had settled thin on the ground; not much of it remained under the faux-practical heels and boots of Londoners on Hyde Park's paths and grounds, but what there was shone decoratively on tree-branches and the sharply pitched roofs of stalls. Strings of pale fairy lights and braziers lit the crisp night air, accompanied more prosaically by streetlights and infrared lamps, and the air was full of laughter, carols, and the scent of mulled wine and caramelising sweet nuts.

Ryan directed a mordant look at the sign directly in front of him, and then a sceptical one at Claudia.

"Enchanted forest," he said.

"I think it sounds very romantic," Claudia said, maintaining an effortless poker face.

Ryan snorted comprehensively, and a corner of Claudia's mouth twitched.

"Look at the pretty lighting," she continued, tucking her hand into his back pocket and gesturing with her Baileys-laced hot chocolate. Ahead of them, beyond a small wooden gate, a grove of some description - possibly brought in for the occasion - had been draped with lights and carefully arranged so as to provide discreet shadow for a number of benches and alcoves covered by bowers. "Don't you think it would be lovely?"

"Festive," Ryan said, as if it was something he'd scraped off his shoe.

Claudia took a gulp of hot chocolate in order to cover an incipient snigger. "You like Christmas."

"Yeah," Ryan said, "I like it, but you have an addiction. You made me go to the fucking ice rink at the fucking Natural History Museum, Claud."

Claudia coughed instead of bursting into laughter as an outraged matron in charge of several young teenagers swivelled like a gun turret and glowered at Ryan. "You enjoyed that."

"I've had it up to here with dinosaurs," Ryan grumbled, face softening minutely.

"But you like skating." Claudia leaned up on her toes and kissed the corner of his mouth very lightly. "And you liked dinner afterwards." Dinner had actually been plates of tapas from the bar served along with prosecco, because they had decided it was impossible to leave the low sofa by a crackling wood stove that they had taken up residence on, but Claudia was fairly sure that had been the whole appeal.

"True," Ryan said dryly, and turned his face to kiss her properly.

The attendant at the gate smiled at them as they showed their wristbands and walked through, into a softly gleaming grove of trees and lights. Most of the other people in there seemed to be couples as well, bar a few running and giggling kids, and Claudia felt magnanimous enough to ignore them as she wandered with Ryan, enjoying a sense of peace all out of proportion to the manufactured clearings and trees, the temporary fountain, the fairy lights. It was nothing, if you looked at it closely, but Claudia didn't look at it closely.

Ryan drew her down onto a bench shaded by trailing vines of some sort, and pulled her onto his lap.

"Very romantic," Claudia said dryly, and Ryan stole her hot chocolate in retaliation.

"It's all that Christmas spirit," Ryan said, apparently sarcastically, but there was a softness in his voice that he normally hid well.

Claudia smiled, and slid her arm around Ryan's neck. The hot chocolate was quite forgotten.

  
Twenty minutes later, they were strolling out of the Enchanted Grove towards the Swarovski Crystal Palace of Ice, on the basis that it would be nice to admire from a distance, and that Ryan had a sudden craving for something hot and alcoholic that could be satisfied by a nearby stall. Once there, they stood transfixed.

"Sparkly, isn't it," Ryan said grimly.

"Last time it wasn't... snowflake themed." Claudia tilted her head on one side. "Or geometric. It does look very... Maybe it's just the effect of the lights?"

"I don't like it."

Claudia wrapped one of her hands tightly around his, and felt his answering grip. There was a sort of nimbus effect from the lights thrown and caught among the crystal snowflakes, and it bore a closer resemblance to an anomaly than she was comfortable with. Last time it had been much less angular, and the lights had been coloured, and it had just... just not reminded her so powerfully of something she usually kept at the periphery of their lives.

Something small, brown and furry ran out of the display towards Ryan's feet. Claudia made a noise of disgust, but Ryan reached for it, seizing it by the tail and lifting it.

"That's not a rat," he said flatly. "I've seen one of these before."

"It's... one of Connor's shrews, isn't it," Claudia realised, and took several cautious steps towards the display. Ryan followed, still carrying an angrily squeaking shrew, of a sort horribly similar to those Connor had tried to explain were very, very distant human ancestors. That had been a memorable shout - entertaining without being difficult from Claudia's point of view. The powers that be didn’t care about shrews on the outskirts of Birmingham, and they had been gratifyingly easy to pass off as a rat infestation, but they had also been difficult to catch.

Connor and Nick had written a paper they would never be able to publish about it.

"Looks bloody like it." Ryan looked around, apparently hoping for somewhere to put it down. "Can I borrow your handbag?"

"No," Claudia said.

Ryan sighed and forged forwards into the exhibition. He disappeared temporarily among a haze of sharp lights, causing Claudia's heart to judder. A few moments later, a small squeak and a blurred arc of brown that vanished among the sparkles suggested to Claudia that the shrew had been repatriated.

She got her phone out, and rang her half-sister's number just as Ryan reappeared, looking sour. He opened his mouth, and she raised a hand, grimacing as she mouthed 'Jenny'. Her phone wasn't working too well, but the sheer density of mobile coverage in London meant that - a prudent fifty metres from the anomaly itself - she could make herself heard.

Ryan shut his mouth again with a snap.

"Hi," Claudia said pleasantly. "I'm in Hyde Park, with Tom. There's something I think you should see." She listened to Jenny swearing, and waited for a convenient point to break in. "It's in the Swarovski exhibit with the crystals."

  
The anomaly team took forever to arrive, and when they did Claudia didn't recognise half of them. Nick wasn't present, and neither were Connor or Abby. She hadn't expected Stephen, having received an admirably brief email explaining that he had left the project for good, but there should still have been familiar faces. She didn't even recognise any of the black-clad soldiers, although their leader, a Captain Becker, wore the same look of concealed exhaustion that she remembered on Ryan and was extremely polite to them both.

"Where have you been?" Ryan demanded conversationally, trapping another shrew.

"Deptford," Becker said, rolling his eyes, and stepping quickly in front of a young woman with assorted meters in hand, who had made a mad, Connor-like dash for the anomaly. "Dr Cheong, not until the area has been secured. Miss Brown, Jenny would like me to let you know that she will be here shortly, she was at the House of Commons with Mr Lester."

"I'm sure I look forward to seeing her," Claudia said, staring around her as the cordon was set up, civilians pushed back, given a convincing explanation for the sudden closure of the exhibit by the ambulance which arrived and set up close by, and a distraction by the Winter Wonderland staff who were promising people free drinks. The process was so familiar, but she couldn't shake the idea that she was missing something, the sensation that the anomaly project had - when she and Ryan weren't looking - changed into a very different beast.

Claudia wouldn't have expected to hear from Connor when he changed jobs - if he changed jobs - but she had been on more comfortable terms with Abby, and would have expected some kind of a message from her. A shiver went down her spine. The anomaly project's mortality rate wasn't what it had been, but they still paid a bloody price for every safe day.

Ryan and Becker were making small talk while Becker's men and the scientists ran around the secured perimeter trying to recapture prehistoric shrews. Claudia cut in without mercy.

"Where are Connor and Abby? Have they developed a work-life balance all of a sudden?"

Conversation came to a halt.

"You don't know," Becker said, plainly surprised.

"What is it that we're supposed to know, Becker?" Ryan said, pleasant but unyielding.

Becker looked from one to the other of them, and then his face set. "I think you'd better speak to Jenny about this," he said.

At this auspicious juncture, Jenny hurried up to the cordon, and a small girl ducked under the tape and bolted for the anomaly, swiftly followed by an older woman with curly brown hair crying for her to stop and a man somewhat older than that, who tripped over an improperly taped wire from one of the lighting displays and knocked Jenny flat just as Becker apprehended the child and Ryan seized the woman.

"What," said Claudia deliberately, standing perfectly still in the midst of chaos and wishing they'd at least made it to the glühwein stall before all this had happened, "is going on?"

" _Yarrow_ ," the woman with curly brown hair said severely. "How many times have I told you not to run?"

"But the -" Yarrow blurted, and then shut her mouth very quickly, with a telling look at the anomaly-augmented glitter of the Swarovski ice palace.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am," said the man who had knocked Jenny flat, helping her up.

"Where are you from?" Jenny said, staring at either the accent or the odd assortment of clothes all three were wearing. "And what do you know about... the incident taking place here?"

"Ow," Becker said, deadpan. "Miss, don't stand on my toes. You'll hurt your feet."

"Yarrow," said the curly-haired woman and her companion, almost simultaneously. Claudia doubted either of them were Yarrow's biological parents - the woman didn't quite look old enough to have a daughter who must be twelve or so, and the man looked nothing like her - but they were clearly accustomed to standing in a similar position.

"But we have to get back," Yarrow hissed. Her accent was strong and unfamiliar: Mancunian, maybe, but run through a mangle.

Claudia looked around, and saw that people were noticing something new had happened; no-one had come over yet, but they were drifting that way, in knots of twos and threes.

"Jenny," Claudia said. "We're attracting attention."

Jenny nodded. "Let's talk about this somewhere quieter," she said, and shooed them all further into the ice palace, where - though still visible - none of them could be clearly seen.

The anomaly was spinning lazily in the air, only a foot or so off the ground. Becker's men had found small baskets seasonally decorated with red plush and appliqué reindeer somewhere, and were using them to repatriate shrews by the basketload. Claudia couldn't tell whether they were doing this for the entertainment value, or because it genuinely was more efficient.

Becker nodded to one of them. "What's the other side look like, Twister?"

"Got tracks," the soldier replied, after a wary glance at the newcomers and a slight nod from Becker. "Human, but none of them are right, and we didn't see anyone."

"None of them are right?" Ryan muttered.

"I have no idea," Claudia murmured in response, although an idea was beginning to dawn on her, and she didn’t like it much.

"It's probably Jurassic," said one of the scientists, a sweet-faced woman in her late thirties with cheerful glass-green eyes. "Not that Twister let me go through, but from descriptions."

"It's for your own safety, Dr Williams," Becker said. Dr Williams scrunched her face up at him, plainly two seconds from sticking her tongue out, and then turned and left in response to a call from another civilian examining one of the shrews.

"I put some bait down while I was through," Twister said. "Cat food. These little squeaky bastards seem to like it, so hopefully they'll stay there."

"Language, Lieutenant," said the older man, now in Ryan's custody. "Not in front of children."

"I know lots of words that are worse than that," Yarrow said scornfully.

"We wish you didn't," the woman who had been with her said.

Claudia looked at Jenny, who pinched the bridge of her nose. "How many tracks would you say, Twister?" Jenny said.

"One child," Twister said. "Five or six adults. At least two modern pairs of boots."

"One child and five or six adults," Jenny repeated, and then turned a glare on the two adults and one child now grouped together in a huddle. "Where are the others, then?"

The man and woman exchanged looks, and the woman laid her hands on Yarrow's shoulders and nodded. The man spoke.

"We left them on the other side of the portal. It's too modern for Alice, and neither Guillaume nor Lindiwe speak fluent English. Franz also stayed. We try to keep the size of an advance party to a minimum."

"If that's the case then why did you bring a child with you?" Jenny demanded.

Yarrow opened her mouth, but the woman squeezed the girl's shoulders and shook her head; Yarrow scowled magnificently, but quietened.

"Yarrow saw the portal first," the woman said. "And went through. Bill and I went after her."

"And you are?" Jenny said.

"Emily," the woman said.

"Emily, Bill, Yarrow, Franz, Guillaume, Alice and Lindiwe," Jenny said, as if committing the names to memory. She shook her head and pinched her nose again. "Where are the rest of your group?"

"Franz didn't tell us where he was taking them," Bill said. The change in his pleasant face was slight but distinct; formerly open, it became hard as teak. "It won't be very close by. We don't often meet other people on the other side of portals, but when we do, we have to accept that they might not be... nice."

"We want to help you," Jenny said. "And we think you might be able to help us." Her eyes flicked towards Claudia as she spoke, but she didn’t explain.

Claudia slipped her hand into Ryan's. She was getting more and more suspicious of all this.

"That would be nice," Emily said, cool and bright. She sounded like she'd walked out of a period drama, although her harlequin clothes called into question just what sort of a drama it might be: her hair was braided and tied with a rag, like Yarrow's, and she had a long canvas jacket buttoned tightly over a heavy, broad scarf and what looked like a pair of jodhpurs. Her boots, tight at the ankle and thick at the sole, looked like army boots, but they were brown, not black, and stained with a number of unidentified substances.

The scientists were circling. One - the one who had made a dive for the anomaly - had taken one look and gone back to her instruments; the other two were sneaking closer and closer. Dr Williams eventually stepped in.

"I'm Tegan," she said, shaking hands with all three. "And this is Jenny, and that's Captain Becker. Please excuse them. This is a very secret thing happening in a very public place and they are both on their last remaining nerve."

Jenny smiled with her lips pressed together, the way both she and Claudia did when they were indeed on their last remaining nerve.

Bill and Emily both smiled politely in response to Dr Williams' overtures. "What year is it?" Bill asked. "Yarrow thinks it has to be the early 2000s, from the technology, but I say it's later. 2020 or so."

"You're both partly right," Tegan said. "It's the 30th of November, 2009. You're in Hyde Park, London. When are you from?"

"I was born in 1919," Bill said. "In Coventry. I got... lost... from East Anglia, in 1956." He looked at Emily. "It's been a couple of years since then, I think. It's hard to tell."

"1856 for me," Emily said. "In London. I have been back before, but never closer to my own time than 1880." She raised her eyebrows. "The Albert Monument isn't much improved for being lit up, I must say."

"It's hideous," Claudia agreed. "I'm Claudia, incidentally, and this is Tom."

"Pleased to meet you," Emily replied. Her eyes travelled between Claudia and Jenny, plainly picking up on the obvious resemblance, but she said nothing. Both Claudia and Jenny kept their mouths shut in return.

"I'm from Manchester East," Yarrow volunteered. "I went through a portal in 2149. I didn’t mean to, it was an accident -"

"Yarrow," Bill said, quietly warning her, and Yarrow shut her mouth with a snap.

Emily looked back at Jenny. "Are you going to let us go?"

"Yes," Jenny said. "But we'd like to talk to you first." She hesitated. "As I said, we'd like to help you. And if you know about people travelling through the anomalies, you could help us."

"Help," Emily repeated carefully. "How so?"

"Information, that's all." Jenny flicked a sheaf of chestnut hair over one shoulder. "If you'll come back to our headquarters with us, briefly - we could offer you food, a chance to sleep somewhere safe, a chance to restock, medical attention for any of your group who need it. It's an open invitation. All we would ask you for is your perspective on what it's like behind the anomalies."

Cold fingers were sliding up Claudia's spine, vertebra by vertebra, even though no-one had outright told her yet.

_Connor. Abby..._

"Do we have a choice?" Bill asked.

Jenny hesitated again, a shade too long. "There are people who would like me to say no."

Claudia shifted and opened her mouth, and then she felt Ryan's hand wrap tightly around hers and squeeze, just once. Be careful. We don't have all the information.

If she was in charge, could she swear that she would do anything differently?

She hoped so.

Bill was looking around the exhibit at the odds stacked against his little group, hands loosely curled at his sides. He looked tough enough, broad-shouldered and strong, and some of the clothes he was wearing looked like the remnants of a uniform, but he only had a knife - that Claudia could see, anyway.

"You'll allow us to leave through an anomaly after we've given you your information?" Emily asked.

"Yes," Jenny said. "This one, if we can manage it." She turned her head. "Dr Cheong, how long is this one likely to remain open?"

"Fourteen hours," Connor's counterpart said, raising her head from the instrumentation. "Give or take the usual margin for error. Sorry."

Emily nodded slightly. "You'll keep Yarrow with us?"

The girl's eyes widened and she pressed closer to Emily and Bill, as if she hadn't considered the thought that the anomaly team might separate them. Claudia hung on tightly to Ryan's hand. None of these people officially existed; technically, Jenny could probably do as she liked with them. Or as Jenny's employers required. Emily and Bill clearly knew that, even if Yarrow was young enough and brash enough to assume a certain immunity.

"Of course," Jenny said. "She's a minor and you're her guardians."

Bill and Emily exchanged a long look. The rest of the people in the Winter Wonderland were laughing and shrieking, stalls hissing and calling with activity, and festive music could be heard, but all of it sounded very much at a distance. In the ice palace, you could have heard a pin drop, and the silence was so thick it would have fallen as slowly as it would through treacle.

"We accept," Emily said, at last. "But we'll leave our friends where they are."

"Understood," Jenny said. "Dr Cheong, would you lock the anomaly, please? For the present? Just to make sure Captain Becker's men don't waste any more of their valuable time chasing voles."

"Shrews," Dr Williams corrected. She had her arms folded and her shoulders hunched. It might have been because she was cold.

"Shrews," Jenny agreed.

Dr Williams insisted on hustling Bill, Emily and Yarrow into a car with her and a stocky young man who had longsuffering postdoc written all over him: Claudia found herself facing down Jenny.

"You and Ryan had better come with us," Jenny said. "For the Official Secrets Act."

"Are you kidding?" Claudia demanded. "I've signed so many copies of that thing I can recite the first paragraph off by heart! Doesn't that count any more?"

"It's policy," Jenny said, and sighed. "People watch us a lot more closely than they used to, after - Well." Her voice turned falsely bright, the forceful glamorous head girl to Claudia's rather plodding prefect. "We're working on it. Sorry to interrupt your date, but that's just how things are right now."

Claudia could feel Ryan warm and solid behind her right shoulder, but she remembered enough about predators to hold her ground and keep her hands from trembling with suppressed anger: there was a reason the rest of the Ministry of Defence thought Claudia Brown was unnaturally cool under pressure, and it had a lot to do with the fact that most of them had never held still in the face of a carnotaurus. "This is why I quit, you know," she told Jenny. "I saw this coming. I didn't think you would stay if it got this bad, but I can be wrong."

Jenny's expression didn't change by even a flicker of an eyelash. "I know."

There was a glacial silence.

"We can give you a lift," Jenny said.

"Thanks," Ryan said, one hand touching the small of Claudia's back lightly. "We'll drive ourselves. Unless the office has moved, too."

"No," Jenny said. "We're still in the same building."

"We'll see you there," Claudia said.

  
As the car door slammed shut behind Ryan Claudia put the car in gear and tried to think of what to say.

Ryan got there first. "Well. That was a clusterfuck."

The kick of his swearword and the click of the seatbelt closing bled into one, and Claudia let her breath out. She pulled out of the parking space she had snaffled at a MoD property near the Park, and turned them towards the exit. "Jenny looks so much older than the last time I saw her."

"Which was..."

"Six months ago, when Nick got shot." The car slid smoothly under the opening barrier. "We went for a coffee. You were busy poking fun at Nick."

Ryan's mouth quirked. "He deserved it. And I made him laugh."

Claudia smiled reluctantly. "Perverse Scottish bastard." She navigated carefully through the streets thronged with shoppers out for late opening and revellers on the Christmas party high. "I wish I had the old blue light."

"Traffic's shite," Ryan agreed. He leaned forward and tweaked the heater. "ARC doesn't seem much better."

"No." Claudia bit her lip. "More of the... political stuff, I suspect."

"If I had to guess, I'd say you're right." Ryan folded his arms. "But there's more to it. Jenny didn't want to let those three go."

"Would I have done?" Claudia tapped the wheel. "I mean - we knew people could survive behind the anomalies, see Helen bloody Cutter, but a group of seven? A child? That's momentous. We could learn from them."

"You wouldn’t have risked separating them from the rest of their group," Ryan said. Claudia saw him risk another glance sideways at her. "And it's obvious there's something else. Not political."

She braked for a red light, watching a shoal of excitable children cross the road ahead. "Are you trying to let me down gently?"

There was a silence that lasted until well after the light had changed and Claudia had moved off.

"I just don't want to say it." Ryan looked out of his own side window.

"Me neither," Claudia said, and they continued in silence for another few minutes, before Claudia burst out in a near-hiss - "How could it happen? How could they get stuck? They knew the anomalies and the risks better than anyone."

"We don't know. We've got no intel."

Claudia heard the thud of Ryan's fist hitting his knee, and reached over to cover his hand with her own for a few moments before she had to go back to the gearstick.

"And we weren't told," she said, turning this over in her mind. "I don't know - I realise we're not on the project any more. But... I would have expected Jenny to say something."

Ryan didn't respond.

"Have you heard from Stephen lately?"

"Last week," Ryan said, shifting in his seat a little. "I said, but you'd just got back from Brussels, I think you were half asleep. He likes Brazil. Conservation suits him."

"Good," Claudia said quietly, pulling onto the road towards the ARC. "At least he's okay."

Neither of them said anything more until they reached the exit for the building, and Claudia had driven back onto the smaller roads.

"We'll get it out of them," Ryan said. His hand landed on her thigh, the warm weight of it familiar and reassuring.

Claudia's mouth twisted into a smile, until the ARC's building came into view and she wiped her expression into neutrality. The car park hadn't changed its location, at least, but security was heavier, and she didn’t recognise the soldier on duty.

"Claudia Brown, Ministry of Defence," she said. "Miss Lewis is expecting me and my fiancé."

She parked in a spot marked _Reserved: JML_.

"Petty," Ryan observed, but he seemed amused; he was smiling when she leaned over and kissed him.

"I don't know what you mean."

Someone came to escort them, but he tried to take them the direct route, and Claudia wanted to see what had happened to the ARC in the nearly two years - her heart gave an unpleasant jolt - she'd been gone. She announced that she knew a shortcut, and plunged forward into the still-familiar corridors.

The layout, at least, hadn't changed, and the lighting and decor were much as ever - maybe a little shabbier in places, although the lights remained steady and bright, not a weak or flickering bulb anywhere. It was all clean, well-maintained. But it was very empty.

When Claudia left, the ARC had been expanding in response to a threat that they knew they needed to understand better. The military contingent had remained more or less stable, responding to demand - if you could call the losses and injuries they took, and the hours spent chasing anomalies all over the country, demand - but the proportion of scientists working on the project, and the number of support staff, had risen. Claudia recalled unoccupied labs filling up, offices with extra desks moved in. The building had been chosen for growth capacity, as the threat only seemed to grow with them.

Cut funding, Claudia thought, and of course the scientists go first. She wondered how healthy the administrative staff was these days; ministers could usually see the wisdom in not doing their own paperwork.

Jenny had said nothing about it, but then they didn't talk a lot, despite their shared mother's wistful sighs and fond hopes.

Claudia very carefully didn't look back at Ryan as they reached the atrium. The closer in they had got, the more populated it was, and the more signs of change in the building's fabric Claudia noticed. Jenny - and Claudia's contacts - had mentioned Helen Cutter's bomb, and the fire that came after it, and of course the building had previously been compromised by Leek's predator attack. But it had clearly been built to withstand the apocalypse, because the structure itself was little different, if at all. Claudia recognised the layout exactly. Cosmetically, there were obvious differences, alterations in colours and materials, but how much had really changed, under that? Very little.

Claudia hoped it was a metaphor, and that the atrium itself wasn't confirming her worst fears.

She'd always liked this space. It was the most light and air you got in the entire building, discounting a rooftop garden that wasn't meant to exist, and it lent an openness to the ARC's operations that was sorely lacking in other areas. Also, she'd found the way Lester liked to lean on the railing and pretend he was surveying his domain when he was actually worrying over all of them like a pinstriped mother hen very entertaining.

Before, it had been cluttered by the Anomaly Detector Device, an electronic octopus snaking imperfectly-taped-down cable tentacles in all directions and totally surrounded by Connor's paraphernalia. He would eat or work at the detector desk, and seemed to divide his working hours between refining the detector, working on his database and causing havoc - all three of which he could do from the detector desk, encircled by blue screens watching over the UK. Sometimes he'd fall asleep there, and have to be prodded awake by Abby or carried off to a bunk by Stephen. Lester had pretended not to keep an eye on him from the glass-walled office on the mezzanine level.

The young woman - hardly more than a girl - who looked up at them now and beamed hardly seemed as if she needed to sleep, she was so clearly bursting with energy. Or maybe that was just a side-effect of wearing blisteringly bright turquoise and the optimism of youth: she couldn't be more than twenty. She was tidier than Connor had been, regardless - the ADD had been streamlined, the wires run somewhere neat and tidy where they couldn't trip the Defence Minister's favourite SpAd again, and the only snacks visible were a carefully closed metal water bottle and a packet of posh-looking chocolate buttons. There were, however, some Christmas decorations; an elaborate garland of handmade paper snowflakes, and a Christmas tree off to one side. Both were very tasteful, and lacked the spontaneity and gaudiness of previous years. Clearly the ARC had begun to take Lester's strictures on appropriate workplace decoration to heart.

The girl's straightforward blue eyes were bright with recognition, and she was fidgeting with excitement. Claudia was a little uncomfortable at being scrutinised, but she was grateful to know that - whoever she was - she recognised one of the original team members. It meant that if her hiring postdated Connor's... disappearance... the girl still knew the project's history. She knew who had invented the tools in use.

The noise of a pair of sensible heels - probably Marks and Spencer, mid-height, certainly either black or navy - made Claudia smile. She looked up and saw that at least one member of the original staff was still stubbornly in residence, and apparently unchanged: Lorraine Wickes was walking down the mezzanine ramp, a sheaf of files tucked firmly under one arm. Her expressions were never all that easy to read, but Claudia was fairly confident she was smiling back.

"Mr Lester and Jenny are waiting for you upstairs," she said. "It's good to see both of you." The files were handed over to the excited young woman at Connor's old desk. "Your patent applications, Jess."

"Hard copies?" the young woman demanded, obviously appalled.

"Hard copies. Take it up with the Patent Office." Lorraine looked back at Claudia and Ryan. "You haven't changed the way you take your coffee?"

"No," Ryan said, and Claudia didn't have to look back at him to know he was smiling, or that he felt the same relief she did. If James Lester was still working with the right team, he could get past any number of ministers. Jenny and Lorraine definitely counted as the right team, even if Jenny was behaving... oddly. "And you haven't changed a bit, Miss Wickes. Still holding up the roof?"

The slight curve of Lorraine's lips broadened into a real smile. "Only until the scaffolding comes down. If you're free for dinner before Christmas, Niall and I would love to see you."

One day Claudia would get used to Lorraine's improbable taste in men. She glanced back at Ryan. "We'd like that. Let us know when you can make it; we're on a more flexible schedule than you are, these days."

Someone on the floor above cleared their throat so loudly it echoed through the atrium.

Claudia looked up, and observed James Lester - no pinstripes today, sober navy, but a natty red tie - leaning over the railing.

"I think that was meant to be a hint," she said.

"I hope they appreciate your sparkling wit in the Ministry of Defence," Lester retorted. "Whenever you have a moment, Miss Brown."

Claudia lingered long enough to ensure she had the right number for Lorraine, and so that Ryan could ask after one of his more startling junior colleagues (according to Lorraine, Blade was well, which didn't surprise Claudia; she hoped the constabulary in Putney weren’t too keen on stopping and searching) before turning to make her leisurely way up the ramp towards Lester. Not so slow as to seem disrespectful. Just slow enough to make a point.

I don't work for you any more, and I won't be pushed around.

The slightly raised eyebrows as Claudia approached and shook hands with Lester suggested he'd got the message. Claudia hoped it stuck. Jenny had been in full head girl mode in Hyde Park; if she and Lester now tried to gloss over whatever was happening here, Claudia would have a serious sense of humour failure.

"Do come in," Lester said, ushering them into his office. "Coffee will be forthcoming shortly."

Nothing had changed here. Claudia could almost imagine that she had never left, if it weren’t for the subtle changes in the patterns of wrinkles on Lester's forehead, and the extra shadow to the bags beneath his eyes. The lighting in here tended to glare unless strategically dimmed; Lester hadn't bothered.

"The office is secure," he continued. "Not a bug in sight. Since Christine Johnson gave us so much trouble, Captain Becker has been commendably zealous."

Claudia sat down in one of the alarming ergonomic chairs and employed a trick of balance - learned when she was first trying to sit still in the chair and cope with Lester's lectures at the same time, without being overwhelmed by the chair's disconcerting propensity to tip - to find her equilibrium. Ryan gave the remaining chair a profoundly unfavourable look and dragged something more stable and less technologically advanced into the room instead.

"That's good," he said. "But you're still having political trouble."

Lester pinched the bridge of his nose. "When are we not?"

Jenny let herself in, murmuring apologies, and took the other ergonomic chair. Like Claudia, she balanced perfectly.

Lester nodded to her. "The Minister is a tick. So far, so much the usual. And we've had little trouble from most elements of the security services since Christine Johnson's unfortunate... experience."

"I didn’t go to the funeral," Claudia said. She'd heard rumours - not that it was connected with the anomalies, but encoding several pieces of information that someone who knew anomalies and knew how the project worked could string together. She'd heard other things, too. A large number of people had been robustly speaking ill of the dead. "How did she get herself killed?"

"She involved herself with Helen Cutter," Jenny said, tapping an elegant ballpoint lightly against her notebook. "And tried to double-cross her. Helen dragged her into an anomaly full of future predators and most of her didn't come back out again." She clapped her pen against the pad's cover and held it still, considering. "I was on a leave of absence at the time."

Claudia remembered a period - some time in March, she supposed - when Jenny had been unusually communicative. There'd been a friendly drink or two and a girls' night in, and Jenny had been quiet and thoughtful and had wanted to talk about how Claudia had dealt with some of her near-death experiences. If there had been a breaking point that had caused her to leave.

Claudia had explained that it hadn't been her near-death experience that had been the breaking point.

There had been an uncomfortable silence, followed by Jenny explaining in stilted language that while of course she liked Nick, that didn't mean...

"I'm glad," Claudia had said, and kissed her half-sister on the cheek. "You'd be divorced within the year."

Jenny had tried to protest, Claudia remembered - but then she'd given in and laughed, and Claudia had caught it from her, and Ryan had stuck his head around the door to see them sprawled over the sofa in hysterics, a bowl of crisps gone flying and healthy dips escaping only because they weren't being eaten.

Of course, there had been at least two arguments since then, and a period of radio silence, but still, Claudia thought. Leave of absence - and Jenny had come to her.

"So," Ryan said briskly. "Christine Johnson. No longer a problem. Helen Cutter?"

Lester massaged his temples. "Disappeared through an anomaly. One of our staff went to catch up with her, but unfortunately, the anomaly closed. We have no idea what happened thereafter - for obvious reasons."

"Was it Abby or Connor?" Ryan said, flatly. "Who went after her."

"Neither," Lester said. He sighed heavily. "They became trapped through a different anomaly."

"When?" Claudia forced out, through numb lips. At the end of the day, she hadn't known Abby or Connor all that well; not enough to say what their favourite colours or least-favourite siblings were. She didn't even know if Abby had family (besides whatever complicated relationship she had with Stephen and Connor, and Nick's occasional, semi-paternal concern). But she did know what they would do at four in the morning if someone screamed for help, or how they would react to a baby oviraptor. She had slogged through mud, cleaned off blood and worked over New Year with them.

They mattered.

"Four months ago. At the same time as Danny went after Helen." Lester rubbed his temples again; there was a painful, pinched look about his mouth. "We had... a trying day, generally speaking. No one was able to prevent them going alone. You know how independent Abby and Connor are. They might have listened to Becker, or to myself - but neither of us was there, we were trying to deal with Helen."

Claudia recognised the kind of exhaustion that corroded.

"They're dead, then," she said quietly, trying to take in the information. Ryan's hand curled round hers and squeezed tightly, and she hung onto it.

"This is unusually defeatist of you, Miss Brown," Lester said, with the usual brisk upswing, but there was a brittle edge to his voice.

"We have proof downstairs that people can survive," Jenny said, but she wouldn't meet Claudia's eyes. "Even unprepared. And Abby and Connor between them know more about the anomalies and surviving them than anyone else, except perhaps Helen."

Ryan stirred. "When are you planning to declare them dead?"

Lester's jaw tightened. "Never, if I can help it."

"You can close anomalies now," Claudia said, leaning forward. "Can you open them? Go back to where you lost them, and -"

Lester was shaking his head. "Connor's prototypes for an anomaly opener weren't finished. We tried to get one up and running." He tapped his pen on the glass of his desk, where it rang unpleasantly; he winced and stopped. "It blew up."

"Oh," Claudia said softly, and settled as far back into her seat as its unique equilibrium would allow.

"We haven't given up," Lester said, equally softly.

Claudia let the relief of that sink into her for a bit, and then she seized her mind and forced it to focus. "So this is the reason for your interest in Yarrow, Bill and Emily."

"The travellers? Yes."

"Or part of it," Claudia added, watching his face carefully.

Lester's eyes flickered. There were probably very few people in the world who would have registered it, but Claudia did. She'd worked with him long enough, under sufficiently challenging circumstances, that she knew his reactions - even the smallest.

Aha. She thought it, but didn't say it; her exhale was silent. Jenny sat up a little straighter.

Ryan's thumb rubbed over her knuckles. "How sure are you this room is not bugged?"

"Captain Becker and Miss Parker went over everything in it this morning with a fine-toothed comb," Lester said, and steepled his fingers. "Ninety-five percent. You can't legislate for everything."

Ryan removed his phone from his pocket and (after glancing at her for confirmation) her own; then he removed the batteries and laid them face down on Lester's desk.

Jenny sighed noisily, but she and Lester did the same with their own.

Ryan sat back in his chair and looked at Claudia. She nodded, and fixed Lester with a stare that could have punched through a plate of Kevlar.

"How much pressure are you under?"

There was an infinitesimal pause.

"You know what the anomalies are like," Lester said. "I'm surprised you need to ask."

Claudia leaned forward. "I'm not talking about the anomalies. Answer the question."

Lester didn’t blink. "I'm surprised you're asking me."

"My sister wouldn't tell me if I tried and you know it. Answer the question."

There was a long still moment, and the air in the office froze and turned as heavy as lead. Claudia felt Ryan settling into it where he sat close to her; tensing, bracing as if he expected a threat. She knew it was automatic, and she herself didn't move.

Lester broke first, as Claudia had known he would. He'd promised not to drag her or Ryan back into the anomaly project, and the information he was about to give her was obviously highly confidential. But there were probably ways she could help, from where she stood, and Lester wouldn't turn those down. Not with the project under threat. He cared too much.

"A great deal," he said baldly. "After Connor, Abby and Danny disappeared and Stephen was so badly injured and quit, a number of questions started being asked as to my capability to manage the project - and you know what some of the other options were, Miss Brown."

A cold shiver curled around Claudia's spine. "I know."

"In order to retain control, I had to make deals with assorted devils." His mouth tightened. "This is... an ongoing process, especially as the ARC's funding is in flux."

"We're being asked to produce deliverables," Jenny cut in. Claudia had always seen her sister as beautiful, glamorous, commandingly sophisticated, but that glossy red mouth had twisted in a grimace that turned her eyes as hard as teak, and made her look as willing to dismember as any velociraptor of Claudia's unfortunately extensive acquaintance. "It's difficult to prove a negative. Forecast the public panic that would have happened if we weren’t there, count the people who never died -" she waved an impatient hand - "number the ministers that would have fallen, or tally up the negative press."

Ryan raised both eyebrows at her. "Frustrated, Jenny?"

"Other people's priorities," Jenny said, picking up a small and tasteful steel cut-out Christmas tree ornament off Lester's desk and turning it over in her hands.

"As ever," Lester said, "Jenny has hit the nail on the head." He folded his hands. "The ARC no longer sets the agenda. We've been stripped of most of our scientific assets, as our efforts at prevention have not reached the impossible goals set for us. I suspect intentional manipulation that I have not yet been able to counter - the goals change every time I speak to the Minister." He pinched his nose. "The less said about the Treasury the better."

"Novel and contentious," Claudia murmured, drawing on nearly ten years of wrangling with public finance.

Lester made a face. "It's been almost four years. We may be contentious but we're no longer novel."

"It's looking likely that the best of our remaining options involves a public-private partnership," Jenny said. Either her mannered outburst had unleashed something, or she felt that the fact that Lester was talking gave her permission to do so as well; Claudia wondered what Lorraine would have to tell her.

"Ugh," Claudia said. "Who with?"

"A man called Phillip Burton," Lester said. He looked annoyed. "Captain Becker and Miss Wickes have compiled a thorough dossier on him, but thus far, we have no leverage. Or I'd be a lot less concerned about the prospect."

Claudia glanced at Ryan, who shook his head. "I've never heard of him," she said.

"He's a tech entrepreneur," Lester explained. "The kind of man with a string of apparently flawless successes behind him, a suspiciously anodyne past, and such a very establishment background that one goes in fear of finding his name in the Honours List. No doubt Connor would have been able to tell us more. A great deal more."

Jenny bent a piece of the small Christmas tree and tried to twist it back into place. Her eyes were shadowed. Lester didn't look at her.

"I'll see what I can find out," Claudia said. She pushed a hank of brown hair behind her ear. "There must be something. No entrepreneur does that well for themselves without leaving some kind of a trail."

Lester nodded. "I agree with you - and if you can find it we will be extremely grateful."

"Try Porton Down," Jenny contributed, setting the ornament back down. The branch she had bent out of shape in anger was still a little odd-looking. "They're frightened of me and officious with Becker and Lorraine. You might have the right angle."

"I see," Claudia said, committing this to memory. "I'll let you know if I find anything." She sat up a little straighter. "What's this got to do with the three people you're holding against their will?"

There was a still moment, and then Lester's shoulders slumped very slightly. "That I can't blame on the Minister," he said. "Unfortunately, that comes directly from the Home Secretary, with the backing of the Prime Minister. There are apparently concerns regarding... movement of persons and criminal warrants."

"Because of Helen," Claudia said.

Lester nodded. "Essentially." He sat back in his chair. "The problem is that until recent events, the strong feeling was that insufficient people could survive behind the anomalies, and have insufficient control of the anomalies, to cause problems. Helen, however, has disproven that theory - in that we now have proof that she can manipulate anomalies however she likes, and can lead others around them."

Ryan frowned. "We knew all that before."

"We knew parts of it," Lester corrected. "And we had no proof of much of it. Now that there is proof, we are required to document and interview anyone who comes through an anomaly."

"Does that happen often?" Ryan said, eyes narrowed. "Sounds like a set of pointless orders to me."

Lester looked pained. "Contingency, rather. And no, it doesn't happen often. These are the only travellers behind anomalies we've encountered so far - besides the obvious."

"You need to let them go before that anomaly closes," Claudia said, and felt the atmosphere in the room freeze to stillness.

"We'll let them go as soon as we can," Jenny said, smooth and reassuring.

"Separating them from their team is a death sentence," Ryan said, heavy and level, but Claudia could hear anger in his voice. "You know that."

"We’re not separating them from their team any more than they were already separated," Lester said calmly. "We'll equip them and ensure they're fed and given any medical treatment necessary and a chance to sleep before they leave."

"You're still holding them against their will," Claudia snapped.

"We need to know what they have to tell us," Lester snapped back. "And we need to be able to appease the Home Secretary. Believe me, Claudia, this is better than any of the other options."

Claudia's hands had curled into fists without her noticing, and those fists were now trembling. She stood up so abruptly the chair rocked and fell over. "I want to see them."

"I'll take you," Jenny said immediately, standing up herself.

Ryan got to his feet more slowly. He had always moved deliberately, particularly when angry or keeping himself in check somehow; Claudia hoped it was that, and not his slowly healing injuries troubling him. "I'd like to drop in on Becker. If you'll excuse me."

"I can't stop you." Lester tapped his pen on his blotter. "Miss Parker generally knows where he's to be found, but I would recommend starting with the armoury."

"Thanks," Ryan said, politely but without warmth.

"Don't let me keep you," Lester answered, and got a flat look from Ryan that should have made him flinch.

"Happy Christmas," Claudia said, through teeth that only remained un-gritted through a severe effort of will, and swept out.

  
Jenny escorted her down to the medical bay and the offices where Bill, Emily and Yarrow were being questioned and fed; Claudia noticed that none of them were eating or drinking anything that they hadn't seen their hosts eat, and Bill and Emily looked as politely guarded as ever. Yarrow was no longer being questioned openly, but was playing Monopoly with Lorraine. Claudia could hear her complaining that it wasn't as interesting with pieces that couldn't move themselves, but when Lorraine asked if she'd rather not play the girl almost choked trying to get the word 'no' out fast enough.

Claudia wondered, with a horrible nauseous feeling, what it would be like to grow up behind an anomaly. Yarrow seemed happy enough, and Claudia was convinced it would be crueller to remove her from the only family she seemed to know than to allow her to return through the anomaly. But constantly running from death and starvation, without education or a really safe place to go... what kind of life was that for a child?

At any rate, Bill, Emily and Yarrow seemed comfortable. Claudia waved to them, and got acknowledgement from both adults - and Yarrow, once Lorraine pointed out that Claudia was there. None of them asked to speak to her. She hadn't really expected them to.

"You need to sign the Act," Jenny reminded her, as they stood at a polite distance admiring Emily's perfect, if somewhat old-fashioned, table manners.

"We've been over this," Claudia said. "I could paper my house in the copies of the Act I've signed. Hell, I could paper your house."

Jenny grimaced. "I moved out of that monstrosity. It was too big for me and Michael, never mind me by myself."

Claudia was reasonably sure that whatever Jenny had moved into after losing the useless banker fiancé was still much larger and grander than the small south London house she shared with Ryan. She refrained from the temptation to ask if the new place had been large enough for her and Nick's fossil collection, on the grounds that it was rude to tease one's half-sisters about their ex-boyfriends, especially if they were also your own ex-boyfriends.

"Well," Claudia said. "Maybe I can also gift-wrap your car with the leftover copies. This is pointless, Jenny."

They'd always brought out the worst in each other. Jenny's jaw set. "I'm afraid it's necessary, Claudia."

Becker and Ryan found them sitting in the same room seething, while Claudia read every single page of the stack of papers laid in front of her, and didn’t touch a drop of Lorraine's rather belated coffee.

  
An hour later, the last page flipped, and Claudia scrawled her signature over the final sheet. She stood, sending the chair scraping backwards, seized her handbag and slung it over her shoulder like she wanted to sling it at someone's head. "Have a nice evening."

"You too." Jenny found a perfect, glittering smile from somewhere. "See you next weekend."

"Next wee- Oh." Claudia stared for another moment. She could hear Ryan maintaining perfect stillness and silence somewhere behind her. "The 19th."

The anomaly detector went off, blaring the chorus of Jingle Bell Rock, and both sisters twitched. Claudia stifled an inappropriate giggle, and Jenny pinched her nose and shook her head, a tiny smile yanking at her red lipstick.

"I have to go," Jenny said.

"Yes," Claudia said almost naturally. "Of course. See you next weekend."

  
"I'd forgotten about that," Ryan said, as they reached the car.

"What?"

"Your mother's... get-together." Ryan opened his door and paused. "Do you want me to drive?"

"No, it's fine." Claudia settled into her seat. "Yes, I had too. Or at least... it's on the fridge, so I hadn't totally forgotten, but... I have to go present shopping tomorrow, don't let me forget."

"I won't."

They lapsed into a comfortable quiet lit only by the orange gleam of streetlights, and the flashes of brightness from passing cars; the traffic ebbed and flowed more easily now, late enough that most travellers were off the roads. The radio was playing Christmas-themed classical music, and neither of them turned it off.

"You're right," Claudia said at last, as she parked in a side street near their home. "Mum's Christmas weekend will be... awkward."

They shared a look of mutual understanding.

Claudia let her head fall slowly forward to bang into the steering wheel. Ryan's hand landed on the nape of her neck, his fingers combing through her loose hair and tracing patterns over her spine.

"We could lie and say one of us is sick," he suggested.

"Have you met my mother?"

"Right," Ryan said, after a long moment of contemplation. "No."

  
The front door banged shut in an elegant flat near Holborn.

"Hi, babe," Sarah Page yelled, peeling herself away from her desk and a blog post on the conference she'd just been to. "How was work?"

Jenny Lewis emitted an inarticulate yell of rage and threw herself backwards onto the sofa, dragging a pillow over her face.

"There's a bottle of white wine in the fridge."

"I love you," Jenny said, through the pillow. "If I kill my sister, will you help me hide the body?"

"I love you too, Jenny," Sarah replied, patting Jenny's outstretched foot affectionately on her way through to the kitchen. "And no, I won't."

 

***

 

"Why does she do this?" Claudia said, settling back into the car's front passenger seat the following Friday evening. "Why does she bother?"

"Which she are we talking about here?" Ryan said, patiently winkling their car out of the tiny space he had managed to park it in. "Your boss, your sister, or your mother?"

"My mother," Claudia said, closing her eyes against the orange of the street-lights. It wasn't late - she'd left work a little early to accommodate this trip, as had Ryan. Even after all these months away from the anomaly project, that still felt like a luxury. This late in the year, though, night fell dark and abrupt. "Why does she insist on playing happy families?"

Octavia Fortescue had married three times; once at twenty-six, once at thirty-two, and once at fifty-eight. Only the third one had stuck. Claudia was pleased with this - both she and Jenny liked David Cambridge, and Claudia was fairly clear on the fact that her mother wasn't made to be alone. But it would have been nice if David could have gently hinted to her mother that the best way to have a harmonious family Christmas season didn't necessarily have to involve a full-blown family gathering in a house dripping with tinsel and holly, all the grandchildren - well, step-grandchildren - gathered round her knee, and her two daughters from each of her previous marriages joining hands to sing The First Noël. He had managed to persuade Octavia that the entire family didn't need to be on church parade on Sunday morning, and Octavia had, blessedly, decided on her own that matching gifts for Claudia and Jenny were out, but still. Claudia and Jenny had found their greatest moments of solidarity since the first year they'd been allowed to drink on the third weekend of Advent.

Oh, Claudia knew her mother just wanted them all to be happy, and Claudia had always been fond of the Christmas season - but she'd never been an enormous fan of organised fun, and she found it difficult to relax, especially around David's sons and daughter and their spouses and kids. The first few hours were always Christmas overload.

Maybe it would be different this year.

"Because she is happy," Ryan said. "And she wants you to be happy too."

"At least the food is always good."

"It's fucking excellent." Ryan's hand landed on Claudia's knee and squeezed gently. "Go to sleep. I'll wake you up when we hit Wiltshire."

Claudia flickered awake several times over the next two hours - awake enough to see a slight rainfall spotting the car's windows, to see the brightness of a petrol station as Ryan pulled in, to pick up on the darkening of the night and the soft hum of the radio; awake enough to feel warm and safe, and to offer Ryan a small, hazy smile when he looked over at her and his face softened.  
She was still in this pleasant half-dazed state when they reached the gates of David and Octavia's home, and Ryan leaned out of the window into what was now a light, slushy snow to press the button for entry. The gates swung open, and Claudia yawned and rubbed her eyes, not caring about the mascara she would smear everywhere or the concealer that would be dislodged.

"Sleep well?" Ryan grinned.

She stuck her tongue out at him, and straightened in her seat, looking around herself. The snow had dusted assorted topiaries and flowerbeds with a Christmassy icing sugar effect, and a rabbit leapt across the road in front of them (Ryan braked and swore). Little golden fairy lights had been wound into some of the plants. Claudia could not help but notice that these were particularly clear where the road curved slightly unexpectedly. Octavia Fortescue might be festive enough to frighten the berries off the mistletoe, but she was also very practical.

Up ahead, the house gleamed golden and welcoming, and Claudia smiled.

Her mother opened the door as Ryan parked the car - next to a convoy of SUVs, two respectably muddy and one shiny enough to suggest its occupants had never really had to use the four-wheel drive and would be a bit horrified if they did, which informed Claudia that her stepbrothers were here - and Claudia was glad to sink into one of her mother's all-encompassing hugs. She muffled a yawn in her mother's perfectly coiffed hair, and chuckled when her mother told her off for not sleeping enough.

"You should take better care of her, Tom," Octavia said severely, standing on tiptoes to kiss Ryan's cheek and hug him ruthlessly. Claudia smiled again at the laugh this startled out of Ryan, and his retort:

"No-one can stop Claudia when she's got her mind set on something."

"Very true," Octavia said, "come in, come in - have you had any dinner? And Claudia, have you heard from your sister? I was expecting her an hour ago."

"No, but - I know she's very busy," Claudia said, weakly attempting an escape up the stairs with her weekend bag. "And no, we haven't had any dinner - but really -"

"She works in PR," Octavia said. "No one's going to die if she leaves work on time on a Friday. And I want to meet her girlfriend. No, Claudia, don't be ridiculous, leave the bag and come into the kitchen."

Claudia feebly tried to sort some of the contents of this speech, delivered as it was at the speed of a boat plummeting off the Niagara Falls, and cast a helpless look at Ryan as he took her bag from her grip. Girlfriend? she mouthed.

Ryan shrugged.

"It's not like you, working for that classified government project - Jenny does a sensible job."

Claudia winced, but decided that if Jenny hadn't disclosed the amount of time she spent dodging death to their mother, it wasn't Claudia's place to do so on her behalf.

"And no, Tom, not you either! Theo can take them."

Ryan stopped with one foot on the stair, and handed the bags up to Claudia's stepbrother, who was grinning down at both of them. Claudia smiled back with relief.

"Hello, Theo, how lovely to see you."

"Hi, Claudia," he said, taking the bags competently - if less easily than Ryan had. Claudia's stepbrothers had sized Ryan up briefly last year, as if preparing for the inevitable Talk regarding their much younger stepsister, but they were genial semi-fit men in their mid and early forties and had quickly concluded that any necessary revenge would be conducted in their capacities as a lawyer and an accountant, rather than by threatening performative violence. "And Tom! Great to see you too, we must catch up later."

His words trailed off behind Claudia, who was busy being towed into the kitchen. She made a helpless face at Ryan, who smiled unmercifully back at her, and tucked his hand into the warm space at the small of her back to stay with her.

The kitchen was warm and enormous and glowing with goodwill in a way that almost made Claudia want to cry: it screamed of home so loudly that it felt like being the second person back to the house in south London, when Tom had already stuck some food in the oven and a bottle of wine in the fridge, and turned on all the softer lights. There were garlands of Christmas cards strung up around the walls, and bunches of holly in strategic places, and the scent of delicious food everywhere. Claudia’s oldest stepniece had just put the kettle on the Aga, and was piling slices of thick white bread into the toaster, and - by the smell of things, and the clutter confined to one corner of the cavernous kitchen - another loaf had just come out of the bread-maker.

Iona gave Claudia and Ryan a shy smile. She had just hit thirteen and was having trouble with spots, but Claudia didn't see that so much as the way she suddenly looked both very grown-up and terribly young. "Hi, Auntie Claudia. Hi, Tom. I've forgotten how you like your tea."

"Milk, two sugars and strong for me," Tom said firmly.

"And if you can find me something herbal," Claudia added, vaguely, guiltily aware of her outsized caffeine intake, "that would be lovely. Rooibos, or -"

"Camomile," Octavia interrupted, bustling through holding assorted treats at a prudent height, pursued by two dogs and three of her remaining grandchildren. "It's good for you."

"Anything but camomile," Claudia said.

Iona grinned, and swarmed up the shelves to collect a box of rooibos from a back corner. "Grandma will never know."

Iona had set them up with cups of tea and slabs of buttered toast - Claudia found, to her surprise, that she was hungry - and was talking shyly about her prospective GCSE choices when Claudia heard a distant clattering from the front door, and a rather hassled Jenny hurried in, pursued by someone Claudia didn't know who had lively eyes and a soothing manner.

"Hi Auntie Jenny," Iona said, far too well brought-up to comment on the fact that Jenny was swearing under her breath, or to stare at the stranger. "Would you like a cup of tea?"

"I would like whisky," Jenny muttered, and then added hastily "Tea would be lovely. Sarah? Iona, this is Sarah, my girlfriend - Sarah, my stepbrother Theo's daughter, Iona - and this is Claudia and Tom, of course."

Iona's eyes had gone as round as saucers, but she was still too polite to say anything. Claudia was fairly surprised herself; Jenny kept her love life strictly under wraps, but all the serious partners Claudia knew of had been men. And none of them had merited a place at Octavia's Christmas dinner, not even the fiancé whose proposal had been received one New Year and voided the following summer. In that context, Claudia wasn't shocked that Nick had never been invited; Jenny's relationship with him had been far more complicated and less conventional.

"How lovely," she said, getting to her feet and holding out a hand to Sarah, who shook it and then shook Ryan's outstretched hand with a ready smile. "I don't think we've met."

"No, but Jenny's told me all about you," Sarah said, and then winced cheerfully as Jenny sighed and hid her face in one hand. Claudia struggled to stop her mouth from dropping open as she glimpsed a tiny smile, half-hidden behind Jenny's hand. "Only good things!"

Claudia, enchanted, laughed. "Oh, I just bet!"

Iona put the kettle on.

"Traffic was a nightmare," Jenny said, peeling her coat off. "I never want to see Hammersmith again."

"Is that why you're late, Jenny darling?" Octavia said, arriving at the worst possible moment. "I was expecting you hours ago - I was worried. I suppose Claudia and Tom came a different way." She cupped Jenny's cheek in her hand and smoothed one thumb delicately over the thin skin under Jenny's eye. "And you look so tired!"

For a moment, pure frustration flickered across Jenny's polished face. Claudia grimaced in sympathy, and patted Ryan's hand as he wisely took refuge in his tea. Spotting that the new girlfriend was about to leap into the breach, and potentially hand a little joke to Octavia that Octavia would never let go, she spoke.

"Jenny's been working awfully hard recently, Mum - some very high profile clients."

"Of course they have to go for the best," Octavia said promptly, and Claudia bit her tongue to stop herself laughing. Octavia was both fearless and impervious to sickness, and she drove like the devil himself; consequently she had no sympathy with illness, poor weather, or traffic as excuses. One's career, however, had to be prioritised. "And then you have to put in the hours." She kissed Jenny's cheek. "You should have told me, darling."

"Some of it's highly confidential, Mum," Jenny said patiently, kissing Octavia back. Claudia caught a sharp side glance and smiled blandly back. "You remember Sarah? You met in October?"

"Of course! How lovely to see you again."

Sarah shook hands and was suddenly engulfed in a hug. Claudia watched her eyes widen and grinned; Ryan had avoided this only by being seriously injured.

"It's so kind of you to let me come, Ms Fortescue," Sarah said.

Well-briefed, Claudia thought, and wondered if the humorous curl to her mouth was just part of her natural expression or if it was an understandable response to Octavia's exuberance.

"Nonsense, Sarah. My children's guests are always welcome here." Octavia suddenly received a teacup, as Iona - eavesdropping furiously on priceless adult gossip; her father was the best-informed of all Claudia's siblings and in-laws - handed out refreshments. "Thank you, Iona my love. Claudia, dear, that doesn’t look like a proper cup of tea."

"It is," Claudia said truthfully. It was just that her definition of 'proper tea' was not her mother's.

Jenny took a long gulp of her tea, and demolished a doorstep-sized slab of toast. Claudia tried not to let her eyes widen; Jenny had always been so precise in her manners.

"I thought I might take it up to bed," Claudia continued, without missing a beat. Jenny was standing behind their mother, and it wouldn't do for Octavia to turn around now.

"Of course," Octavia said, apparently startled. "You must be very tired."

"It was a long drive," Claudia said unblushingly. Jenny had managed to swallow the entire slab of toast, and Sarah had just brushed the crumbs from the corner of her mouth.

"I thought Tom -"

Ryan, who could quite easily have driven three times the distance, faked a yawn.

"Well, goodnight, Claudie," Octavia said, kissing her cheek. Claudia hugged her warmly. "And Tom. Sleep well, both of you."

  
When Sarah prised herself out of sleep the following morning - under protest, as it was cold outside the snowdrifts of warm fluffy bedding - Jenny was still talking about her sister’s behaviour, which she considered extraordinary.

Sarah rolled on to her back and tried to line up some thoughts. There was a cup of tea on the elegant little bedside table, which was a sufficient inducement for her to sit up, but having done so she swathed her chest and shoulders in the soft sky-blue throw that had been draped elegantly over the foot of the bed, the better to watch Jenny hop into a pair of thick woolly tights while trying to gesticulate with one hand and drink her tea with the other. The fact that she had only two hands seemed to have escaped her.

"So your sister helped you out," Sarah said patiently, having grasped the essential line of argument. "What's weird about that? And what time is it?"

"Nothing, it's just - she's angry with me, and she's infuriatingly sane and _good_ , so why would she do this, and Mum thinks she's perfect, incidentally, and is planning a June wedding -"

"It's December, and your sister isn't even engaged."

"You've met my mother. And it's quarter past nine, incidentally. We missed a healthful dawn country walk." Jenny managed to get both legs into the appropriate fabric counterpart, and most of her tea down her throat.

"Oh, no," Sarah said drolly. "To think I thought running away from dinosaurs supplied me with all my exercise needs. Have we missed breakfast?"

"No," Jenny said, pulling a cashmere jumper dress in sunset tones over her head. "That's why I came to wake you up." She threw a number of items of clothing at the bed, which Sarah took to mean that Jenny was so anxious about this family weekend that she had already chosen Sarah's outfit, an affectionate act of tyranny formerly reserved for visits from the Home Secretary. Sarah obligingly dressed herself.

"Mum is just," Jenny said, searching for words, "I love her very much, but - and why Claudia had to be so perfect -"

"Heterosexual?" Sarah suggested, raising her eyebrows at her girlfriend, who sighed and banged her teacup down on an antique dresser.

"Dutiful," Jenny snapped, and shoved her hands through her hair. "Virtuous. Sexuality has nothing to do with that. I wish I could have hands as clean as hers."

"You should ask Captain Becker about her some time," Sarah recommended. Unable to shake off her researcher's habits, Sarah had engaged in some idle chat about her girlfriend's sister with her colleague, and had discovered that Claudia Brown was reasonably well-known in certain corners of the Forces, most of whom would have preferred to fall into the hands of the Taliban than get into her bad books. Sarah suspected this was mostly smoke, mirrors and the instinctive panic of men faced with a determined woman - but only mostly. "Claudia was on the project before you were. Her hands aren't sparkly clean. And I don't think she's always in your mother's good graces."

Jenny ripped a brush through her hair instead of her hands.

"Besides," Sarah said encouragingly, taking possession of the brush and neatening her own dark locks, "You have that footage to show her, remember?"

"That doesn't make it better," Jenny said. "I hate it when she's right. And I know she's right."

"Now you're just being obnoxious." Sarah kissed her.

"My lipstick has gone everywhere."

"Raspberry suits me." Sarah smeared most of it off on the back of her hand. "Go and fix it, and then you'll feel better. I'll go and see what's for breakfast."

  
In daylight, the house was not as confusingly oversized as it had seemed after dark, though it was certainly large enough, and had been thoroughly covered in Christmas decorations ranging from the professionally tasteful to the charmingly homemade. Sarah spotted numerous ornaments that looked as if they'd been made by children's hands, most of which were shedding glitter, and a positive wall of family photographs draped in silver snowflake garlands. She took several wrong turns on the way to the kitchen, leading herself into a boxroom full of logs for the fire and practical items, a downstairs loo which had been lovingly strewn with paper chains by someone with a sense of humour, and the living room, which contained (among sofas, piano, dogs and middle-aged man having words with a colleague down the phone) a tree roughly as tall as Monty the mammoth, and better supplied with baubles and tinsel.

Sarah decided that, if anything, Jenny had understated her mother's love for the festive season.

There were not a lot of visible adults in the house. Sarah could hear murmurings behind bedroom doors and noise in bathrooms, but she didn’t see many other people, and the only adult in the kitchen was one of Jenny's sisters-in-law, a fair-haired woman trying to feed a cheerful baby, who murmured a distracted hello to Sarah before getting up and leaving the kitchen to yell, in exasperation, "Alistair!"

Since the baby seemed happy enough, and was being watched over by Iona and a collection of friendly dogs it liked very much, Sarah did not try to interfere. There were breakfast dishes in the oven, pastries and breads in a basket under a tea-towel, and bacon being turned over with an air of great importance by Iona.

"Are you the cook this morning?" Sarah enquired.

"I am until Tom gets back." Iona divided her attention between the baby and the frying pan; Sarah helped herself to an apron in order to show willing, and quickly found herself a task involving the coffee pot, and also preventing Iona from accidentally setting herself on fire. "He says everyone should know how to cook bacon."

"He's not wrong. Has everyone gone to wash after the walk?"

"Yes. Except Grandma, she was looking for Auntie Jenny. You're Sarah, aren't you?"

"Yes," Sarah said, smiling at the girl. "And you're Iona."

Iona flushed and nodded. "Grandma says you're an archaeologist."

"I am. I'm an Egyptologist." There was a distant howling, and a pair of small boys hurtled in through a door to the garden, apparently in the middle of a fight over who got to open their shared Advent calendar. Iona yelled at them, but to no noticeable effect; the dogs started barking and the baby began to cry, which caused Iona to pick him up and storm away. Sarah pushed the bacon off the heat, dropped the spatula and grabbed both boys by the scruffs of their necks. "You two behave, or I'll tell your parents, and worse..."

"Worse what?" demanded the more combative of the two children.

Sarah grinned. "I won't tell you how the Ancient Egyptians made mummies. It was gross."

"I know all about that," said the other one, scornfully.

"I bet you don't know as much as I do," Sarah said. "I have a PhD in it."

Both twins squinted dubiously at her. "Is that like... university?"

"It's university several times," Sarah said. She poured them a glass of orange juice each. "Sit down. We'll start with the brains."

By the time Jenny, her assorted siblings and in-laws, and her mother and stepfather had entered the kitchen in search of breakfast, Sarah had acquired an audience of all the nieces and nephews Jenny possessed, and had just about reached the mysteries of canopic jars. The bacon was quite crispy, but not actually burned, and the twins had split the contents of their Advent calendar without much fuss.

"Intestines over breakfast?" Jenny murmured, accepting a mug of coffee and a kiss from Sarah.

"Sorry," Sarah said.

Jenny smirked. "You'll live to regret this. My mother's very pleased you're so good with children."

"Shit," Sarah said, and winked when Iona gasped at her. "Don't tell your parents I said that. Is there a plan for today, Jenny?"

"We're going to the Christmas market in Bath," Jenny said. "The children will be skating." She leaned into Sarah's side. "My sister has an enormous love bite just under her ear, and my mother's going to notice it any minute now." There was a blissful serenity to her voice that strongly suggested that, however suspicious Jenny had been of her sister's apparently selfless action in the kitchen the previous night despite Claudia's grave doubts about Jenny's moral fibre, she was returned to complete calm and bliss by the prospect of Claudia getting into shit for having evidence of overenthusiastic snogging on her person. Sarah thought that if either sister had a flaw, it was to blow each other's transgressions and virtues out of all recognisable proportion.

But that wasn't something you could say at a family breakfast, even if it was devoid of intestines, so Sarah just snorted. At least Jenny was less inclined to snarl at her sister now.

"I’ve never been to Bath," she said. Iona's attention had been distracted by the one other girl cousin, who was much younger and had already eaten, and wanted Iona to play Pokémon with her. Iona was trying to be grownup about refusing, and Sarah wondered if there was going to be trouble, but Jenny's stepbrother (Timothy? Theodore?) seemed to have it well in hand.

"It's pretty. And the shopping's not bad."

"Priorities," Sarah said, and put her arm around Jenny's waist. Jenny's half-sister was smiling at them, so Sarah smiled back, and waited for her turn with the breakfast buffet.

  
Claudia had an unnerving way of appearing just behind one's shoulder when one wasn't expecting it. Jenny would have blamed it on some trick learned from the anomaly project, sneaking away from dinosaurs and disciplining a herd of scientists, but she knew all too well that Claudia had always been like that, and that it had always made Jenny jolt unpleasantly, and always bloody well would.

This time, as Jenny (who had been trying to pay for the parking on her car) dropped several coins in shock, Claudia apologised and picked them up again, wiping her fingers carelessly on her practical dark brown trench coat. "Sorry about that. I just wanted to let you know - we're running late, so Theo and Alistair and Mum have already taken the kids to the rink, and Ruth and Hera had some last-minute shopping to do." She rocked on the heels of her sensible boots. "Actually, I think Hera's sneaked off for a smoke."

"I can't blame her." Hera was the mother of the twin boys, who had insisted on riding in Jenny and Sarah's car, purely because they wanted to know more gory things about Ancient Egyptians. Unfortunately, Hera a) had a weak stomach, and b) had elected to join them. "Are you and Ryan going to do your shopping?"

Claudia shook her head. "We're all right for this year. You?"

Jenny nodded. "You know what the project's like. It doesn't leave a lot of... time."

"I know." Claudia stared off into the middle distance. "Does Sarah?"

"We met at work."

For the first time since about 2006 - since Claudia must originally have joined the anomaly project, come to think of it - Claudia looked surprised. Jenny savoured the moment. "What does she do?"

"Understands time," Jenny said. "Mostly through the medium of Nick's work. He sends her a lot of crotchety emails." She took a deep breath. "We're hoping they can find Abby and Connor, between the two of them."

There was a small, cool silence, there in the middle of a packed car park in a bit of Bath where the honey-gold stone had turned grubby with dirt. Claudia's eyes were quite unreadable.

Jenny took a deep breath, and pulled out her work phone and unlocked it. Jess Parker had sent her a large number of WhatsApp messages, most of them detailing the identification and recovery of a plastic triceratops which had been planted in Alexandra Palace and had caused a minor panic, but Jenny swiped these aside and pulled up a video. She handed the phone silently to Claudia, who took it with a great deal of wariness and looked down at the screen.

Jenny watched Claudia's guileless eyes widen. She couldn't see the screen, but she knew what was on it: fairly steady footage of Bill, Emily and Yarrow, looking clean and well-rested, waving and turning to walk through the anomaly in Hyde Park. Jenny had kept filming as the anomaly dwindled and disappeared to nothing. Her sister was suspicious enough to think there was a trick involved if the anomaly was still there.

"I keep my promises, Claudia," she said quietly. There were Christmas lights in the distance, and Ryan and Sarah were hovering.

Claudia gave Jenny's phone back; her eyes were shining. "It's not really you I'm worried about." She sighed. "It's the entire... system."

"It won't get so bad we can't get round it." Jenny slipped her phone into the inside pocket of a delicate grey woollen coat she was already regretting wearing; her nieces and nephews all had sticky fingers, including the thirteen-year-old. "And we'll straighten it out."

"Says who?" Claudia enquired, with a flicker of one eyebrow.

"Me," Jenny said. She put some steel into her voice.

"Make sure it doesn't break you first."

"I'll try," Jenny said, and she meant it to be dry, but it came out honest - and all the resentment she'd expected to feel at Claudia always knowing everything, Claudia always virtuous, Claudia always right, had turned to dust.

Claudia smiled.

Walking out of the car park, Jenny looped her arm through Sarah's and kissed Sarah's cheek in such a way that she left a red lipstick print behind, as bright as the busking Santa and as festive as the tasteful strings of white lights in angel shapes.

Sarah laughed, and nuzzled Jenny's shoulder without wiping lipstick off on her coat. "Do you want to do your shopping? Where do we start?"

Jenny stopped and thought about it, all her obligations and lists and notes, all the stress and the fear and the worry, and the facade which had to be kept up on top of it, especially at Christmas...

It would still be there after the weekend, or if Jess called her about something more threatening than a plastic triceratops. There was no need to invite it into today.

"No," she said. "Fuck it. I can order it all online. Let's just wander."

 

***

 

"You look wide awake," Ryan observed.

Sarah, who had just stifled a yawn, gave him the middle finger before suddenly remembering that she was in a church and should behave. The gesture turned into a sort of deformed rabbit shadow puppet, and the offending hand was hastily stuffed back into a coat pocket.

"It's been years since I went to church," she said defensively, neatening the scarf around her throat with her other hand. Although Jenny had abandoned her shopping list along with much of her bad temper the previous day in Bath, she had ransacked many of the market stalls to make up for it. Even Claudia had been surprised with a small gift; ornaments for the tree she now shared with Ryan. "I forgot how early it starts. Or how long it goes on for."

Ryan grinned, and looked over his shoulder. Sarah followed his gaze, and saw that David, Octavia, Claudia and one of David's sons were all chatting decorously to the vicar. Iona was reading. The other of Jenny's stepbrothers - Alistair, Sarah thought, the accountant - was trying to get the younger girl and the twins to climb down from the pulpit before a member of the parish council noticed them. Blessedly, the baby and the dogs had been left at home.

"I think they'll be a while," Sarah said.

"I think you're right," Ryan said. He looked back, at the carving in the church which had been occupying Sarah's attention. She knew what he would see: just a Nativity scene, 19th century, a copy of the 15th century original, which had been hidden from Cromwell's men in a damp cellar and was consequently in such poor condition it had to be housed in a special case in the Pitt-Rivers Museum. The copy occupied pride of place over a side pew near the aisle seat Sarah had been sitting in; it had caught her eye in the middle of the third carol and she had been unable to tear her eyes from it since. Luckily, Jenny had been distracted by Octavia's roping her in to sing the descant, a trial Sarah had escaped by being completely unable to sing, and therefore hadn't noticed Sarah's fascination.

It was a fairly distinctive Nativity scene. Sarah, an incurable picker-up of unconsidered bits of local history, passed Ryan the explanatory pamphlet that went with it, written by someone with a lot of letters after their name, most of them accompanied by 'Emeritus'.

"A Star In The East," Ryan read out loud. "A local legend."

He looked up at the star above the stable in Bethlehem, which bore a marked resemblance to an anomaly.

"Once every hundred years," he said, folding up the pamphlet and handing it back to Sarah. "Allegedly."

Sarah tucked the paper away. In the background, one of the twins fell down the steps from the pulpit and started to cry.

"I don't think Claudia and Jenny need to know about this," Ryan said thoughtfully. "Not just yet. Not when they're finally getting along. If it's once every hundred years, we've got a good decade or so to go. Maybe... save it for Monday."

Sarah and Ryan shared a look.

"I think you're right," Sarah said.

"Welcome to the family," Ryan answered. There was a curl of a grin at the edge of that inscrutable mouth.

Sarah shook his hand.

 


End file.
